I'll Sail The World To Find You
by her name is erika
Summary: The same blood flows through their veins, two times over. / Or, Nick and Victoria navigating grief, loss and everything in between together. Mentions NickSage, mentions BillyVictoria, mentions TravisVictoria.
**I'll Sail The World to Find You**

"We share a bond. We do everything together. We have a piece of strong, invisible thread connecting us. It's indestructible – it can never be broken. The thread is the key item that links us together. We understand each other."

—Erica Sehyun Song

—

 **Summary:** The same blood flows through their veins, two times over. / Or, Nick and Victoria navigating grief, loss and everything in between together. Mentions NickSage, mentions BillyVictoria, mentions TravisVictoria.

 **Author's Note:** This is inspired by two things. One, Joshua Morrow's performance in the aftermath of Sage's death. I think this is the best thing to ever happen to Nick as a character because he is a thousand times more complex to me when his spirit is shattered, and he's just broken.

Two, Nick's bond with Victoria. This is one of the tightest, deepest sibling connections on the show and really, my favourite one. Ever. Yes, they have siblings in Adam and Abby, but it runs deeper for them because they are Victor AND Nikki's children. The way they have each other's back is beautiful and I intertwined it with Victoria's current losses to give their connection more context.

I hope I succeeded. I'm in the middle of writing something heavy duty. It's intense. I mean, it's _really_ , _really_ heavy. So, I just watched Josh's performance, his scenes with Amelia as Victoria bandaging Nick's hand and had to write this quickly. I'm playing in the CBS/Sony sandbox…so Young  & the Restless is not my property. Anything recognizable to you is not mine. The title is a lyric from "Count on Me" by Bruno Mars. Listen to that while reading if you want. That's all. Happy reading and considering this is something I typed quickly, forgive me for the typos and this is currently unedited.

Feedback as always, is appreciated,

Erika

—

Victoria disinfects the cut on his hand the best and thankfully, it's not deep.

The white bandage she carefully wraps around Nick's hand turns red with blood. Only then, does she have a realization – the same blood flows through her veins two times over.

She doesn't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Victoria resents her father and might as well start resenting her mother too.

But that's for another time.

—

Sage is there with him in the coffeehouse, excited and hopeful about having the family they could have, their future. And then she's on a slab of cold steel, lifeless and cold.

There's no future. No looking forward. Just this white hot pain in his hand, dark spaces that may become larger and larger in his head and this familiar ache in Nick's heart that hurts way more than being caught in between of the jaws a bear trap. He's waiting to wake up and find Sage's smiling sleepily as she rests her head against his chest.

He looks at Victoria and thinks yeah, she and Billy love each other. They do. Their two children have to add to that and it must mean something. Then Nick thinks, here are the two children of Victor and Nikki Newman in this very room as they all suffer. So, in hindsight, it's meaningless.

Nick watches Victoria wrap the bandage around the circumference of his hand. Her eyes remain downcast, concentrated but he sees a small crease form in between her eyes and hear her sigh.

"It's not the same thing," Victoria finally says, gently breaking the silence. She fixes a silver pin to hold the bandage in place. She looks at him and offers a wry smile. "You and Sage. Billy and me. Sage loved you until her last breath, the very moment of her life. Billy resumed hurting me when he got his back," she pauses and Nick notices something else settle behind his sister's eyes. It's a flash. There, then gone. "You loved Sage even that day. Billy and I – I feel resentment. I can't care about him in any other way besides as the father of my children because I'll hate him otherwise," she explains, more to herself than him. Victoria's hands stop and she looks at him with an accomplished, proud grin. "There. Done."

"Thanks, Vick."

"You're welcome," she replies, touching his arm.

Nick wonders how time can move forward when it seems to start and stop for him. How does the Earth's axis go from light to dark when he's stuck in the middle in an area of grey. He keeps waiting to wake up from a nightmare too long but it doesn't happen. Nick tries to recall everything good about his wife – her bright smile, her laugh, the way her hair felt against her finger tips and yet he saw Sage still, broken and bruised. He sees her body with scratches, and marks that could have been a roadmap of what happens to her. Of what he could, _should_ be there for and isn't.

All he knows is they are going to bury Sage in her favourite black dress and lower her into the ground while he can do anything but stand and watch.

Cassie never quite hits fifteen years old, and Christian never has a chance.

Now, Sage won't either.

"No. Not just for this. For…everything."

(He can't breathe, but Nick keeps it to himself. It's one less thing for Victoria to worry about, and truthfully, he's not sure if he wants to.)

—

Victoria doesn't believe in curses. Just choices. Just reactions.

Murphy's law, which states that for every action comes a reaction. She watches Nick stand and stare at Victor's portrait. She can't help but feel the weight of being a Newman crushing her. It's under her skin. It's her blood. Intertwined somewhere in the double helix of her DNA.

She stands beside him and for a brief moment in time, Victoria looks at this portrait through the eyes of Tori. This isn't Tori's office. This man on the wall for as long as she can remember, is not her father. This is not Tori's burden and her life is ordinary. Tori would meet someone like Nick in passing – like two ships passing by in the night – and like him. Through her own eyes, this is her office. This is this portrait of her father and perhaps, it would be best being set on fire.

Then reality hits Victoria in the face. Resentment wraps around her like a cold blanket, sadness suffocates her when she's just trying to breathe and when Victoria catches a glance at the Brash & Sassy bottle in the display – the glass bottle with her lip print on it – and something like hatred burrows itself in a small corner of her heart. It's a possibility. It's an actual possibility she could hate the man she loves for so many years and the man who gives her two beautiful children. _I probably do._

Victoria sniffles, wiping a tear away and wraps an arm around herself.

"I meant what I said," Nick says, as he tries to keep his voice steady but has a slight tremor in it. "This damn portrait has been here and nothing's been good. You have a chance to live your life. My son is dead. My wife was here yesterday…and now, she's not. I'm stuck."

"No, you're not," Victoria refutes, meeting his eyes. "You're not stuck. You're one of the strongest people I know. You're not going to be stuck. I'm not going to let you be. Not only because I'm your big sister and well, nature says I have to watch over you."

"Of course…"

"But," Victoria adds, seriously, "because I won't leave you behind. Ever. Being Victor Newman's child is a burden. A heavy one. But we're Newmans. When one of us is down, we do come together. Remember when I came home from Miami? You let me yell, snap at you, cry on your shoulder and lie quietly on your couch and just be for a couple hours. Even followed me to my therapy sessions to make sure I was going."

"Yeah," Nick says, wistfully, almost chuckles. "You yelled at me for hours for that."

Victoria then proceeds to collapse that night into tears in his arms, sobbing she doesn't want to go home because she is terrified it will all disappear. She tucks a lock of hair behind her right ear. Looking back, it can be funny because it's such a long time ago and it doesn't have that strong of a hold on her anymore. She laughs too, "I'm sorry if I didn't apologize for that."

"S'okay, Vick."

Nick sighs, and she playfully nudges him. It gets a small smile from him even with his downward glance.

Well, Victoria thinks, a small smile is better than none.

She remembers the bartender with the disarming smile and kind blue eyes.

"You'll be okay," she reassures him, with another hug.

(Victoria doesn't know how Nick will be okay when she can feel pieces of her heart scrape and bump together. She can almost hear the warm parts and the icy parts, cutting arteries and slicing through veins. Truthfully, she might as well bleed out herself and leave her bloodstains right where she stands.)

—

Nick hugs his sister because he can't deal with feeling with anything else. Victoria understands, knows of home, their childhood and there's a familiarity the only thing he can grasp. He can't feel when the glass cuts his palm and is numb when all he sees dark red spill out until it drips on the grass.

Nick raises his trembling bandaged hand slightly from his sister's back and sees white on red. He makes a realization that Sage probably does bleed and suffer right down to her last breath and maybe, yeah, it's because of Newman blood.

Nick makes another realization that he is with one person with the exact same blood as his - the one who says everything to him and sometimes says nothing yet completely understands him.

It's enough for this moment.

Nick doesn't know what will happen during the next one.

—

 _fin._


End file.
